INCIDENT IN ICELAND

Another busy, rather plodding foreign jaunt for Jonathan Gaunt, Edinburgh-based auditor-adventurer for the British Treasury. Now he's off to Iceland, where James Douglas, part-owner of a small airline suspected of bootlegging, has died ""accidentally,"" willing everything to his much older sister in Scotland. She dies too, and the estate's been left to. . . the Queen. Gaunt's assignment: check out the bootlegging rumors and decide whether the Queen's share of the airline can be sold. Douglas' partner Lief, along with wife Anna, seems eager to buy--but Gaunt, after phone threats, an attempt on his life, and hints of murder, realizes that more serious ill-doing lurks, with ominous vibes from a corporate survival-school deep in the lava wilderness. Yes, folks, it's really a school for the inevitable terrorists--and when Anna is captured by same, Gaunt and Reykjavik Inspector Gudnason must rescue her, which they do ingeniously. Some fair twists and a well-done, little-trod locale--but when Bill Knox writes under the pseudonym of Noah Webster, he's always at his most lumbering. Stolid.